September 27, 2000

NUblog
points us at a description
of weblogs that's the best look at the subject I've seen so far. It's
interesting how the form evolved from a list of links to interesting sites
and pages, occasionally with commentary, into a more social form.

ZedneWeb, in its current incarnation, is somewhere near webloggishness.
I don't update daily, but my entries also tend to be long. (These are
related facts. Unfortunately, now I'm reluctant to post anything unless
I can throw a few paragraphs into it.)
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More Copyright Stuff

In my previous
look at copyright, I came down firmly in the middle: I believe that
freely copying music is, at a minimum, disrespectful to artists, but at the
same time I disagreed with the recording industries attempts to stop it.

Partially, this is for technical reasons. The fact is, it is impossible
to completely copy-protect music (or video). At some point, the music has
to exist in a form that can be heard by the human ear, and at that point
it can be re-recorded without copyright protection. That's illegal, of
course, but copying music is already illegal and that doesn't
seem to be stopping people.

This brings us to Andrew Leonard's
comparison of
open-source software and music swapping. There are a number of
rules regarding what people may or may not do with open-source software,
and they tend to be followed even though it's unclear whether those
rules would actually stand up in court. Mr Leonard argues that
people obey the open-source licenses because they believe in their
fairness, whereas the music industry is busy going around charging
far more for a CD than it takes to make one and ripping off its own artists.
Who's going to respect a system that itself shows no respect?

This isn't a perfect argument. The only real restrictions on the use
of open-source software apply to programmers who want to use its code
in their own projects and who, presumably, can appreciate that something
they create might be protected by an open-source license someday.
With music, the people swapping tracks with their friends generally aren't
musicians themselves, and are don't necessarily care about license
restrictions.

That may not be a meaningful point in a few years. If it ever becomes
convenient to transfer small amounts of money ("micropayments"), we may
see artists put up web sites that allow you to send them a few dollars if
you heard their music and liked it. If that turns out to be a viable way
to make a living, then we can expect some major changes in the music
world.
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